Bruins rested, ready for Canadiens

Wednesday

Jan 29, 2014 at 8:17 PMJan 29, 2014 at 8:20 PM

Although the Bruins are in the midst of an extremely busy week, they've found ways to stay hot and get some rest. The B's hope that serves them well as they host the Montreal Canadiens for the first time this season on Thursday night.

Mike Loftus The Patriot Ledger

About time, right? The Bruins play their 53rd game of the season on Thursday night (7:05, NESN, WBZ-FM 98.5), meaning they've completed just shy of two-thirds of their 2013-14 schedule. It's their 28th of 41 home games, which amounts to a little more than two-thirds of their schedule at TD Garden.

Yet it's the first time the Montreal Canadiens have visit ed.

Some blame goes to the NHL's new divisional align ment and scheduling formula, which created four big divi sions and reduced the number of in-division games to four or five, in the Bruins' case. The upcoming Olympic break is a factor, too: It's not as easy as it might sound, at least for some teams, to cram an extra game or two a month onto the calen dar of a busy building like the Garden, and make it work for visiting teams, too.

Complaints like that aside, it seems like a pretty good time for the B's to meet the Habs, the obvious reason being that the Bruins are hot. They're 5-0- 1 over their past six games with four consecutive wins, a nice recovery from a sloppy 3-5-0 stretch that ran through Jan. 14.

They're also as healthy as they've been since early De cember, when players started leaving the lineup in droves be cause of injury. With center Chris Kelly back as of Tues day's 6-2 win over the Florida Panthers (the Bruins' third con secutive six-goal game), only two B's – both defensemen – are hurt. Adam McQuaid, whose third leg injury of the year seems a little more stub born than was thought at first, and Dennis Seidenberg, who's out until next season after ma jor knee surgery.

And finally, the Bruins are pretty fresh for a team that's playing five times in eight days through the end of this week.

Coach Claude Julien has been creative about managing his players' time on the ice. Last week, with four days be tween games, he let the B's take two consecutive days off (except Tuukka Rask and Chad Johnson, who had a goalies-on ly session with coach Bob Es sensa), even though they were only starting to show signs of emerging from their funk. There was no morning skate on Tuesday because the B's had played Monday night on Long Island. Wednesday was a day off.

"At this point, guys aren't going to get out of shape" if they don't practice as much as earlier in the season, Julien said. "We don't have to worry about that. Rest is a big thing right now."

The Bruins have been par ticularly sharp since last week's break, beating the Flyers (6-1), Islanders (6-3) and Panthers (6- 2) in a four-day span. With the exception of a back-and-forth first two periods against the Isles, the B's have helped themselves immensely with strong starts and big leads. Jumping ahead of both the Fly ers and Panthers, 4-0, kept Julien from having to over-use key players, and Rask was giv en the night off against the Is landers.

It's been a big break for a guy like Zdeno Chara, who played 25-plus minutes for six consecutive games before Sat urday. In three games since, he has played 21:43, 22:50 and, on Tuesday, only 20:37, which ranked third on the blue line. And with the third and fourth lines combining to play 27-28 minutes, the top two forward lines only had to play 16-17 minutes apiece against the Pan thers.

"It's been really good, with this tough schedule, that we've been able to spread the ice time around a lot better than we have in the past," Julien said. "And it certainly hasn't stopped anyone from produc ing."

So there should be fuel in the tank Thursday night against the Habs, who stopped a four- game losing streak with Tues day's 3-0 victory over Carolina, but sit fourth in the Atlantic Di vision, 10 points behind the B's.

It's a big gap, but there's this: If the playoffs began to day, the Bruins and Habs would meet in the first round. This long-overdue second of four games between the teams this season (the Habs won at home, 2-1, on Dec. 5) will be as big as always.

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